jeudi 7 mai 2015

LOVE AND LIFE -- L'AMOUR ET LA VIE

Nowhere in the message of Our Lady of La Salette do we find the word “love.”

In fact, much of Mary’s language has often been interpreted as expressing anger. That may be because we assume that we ourselves would be angry in expressing similar sentiments.

But I have had occasion more than once to point out the similarities between La Salette and the prophets. They, speaking on God’s behalf, used threats and promises and everything in between to try to bring their people back to God. Why? Jeremiah expresses the reason in a few short words, spoken as always in God’s name, and which I never tire of quoting: “With age-old [or: ‘boundless’] love I have loved you; so I have kept my mercy toward you” (Jeremiah 31:3).

In today’s second reading, St. John writes, “God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us.”

Mary’s purpose is no different. She came “so that we might have life through him.”

Loving parents want their children to “have life,” not just in the literal sense of physical existence, but also and especially in the sense of a life worth living. Nothing gives meaning to life more deeply, than carrying out the command of Jesus in today’s Gospel: “Love one another as I have loved you.” If we consider how Jesus loved us, and what his love for us cost him, we can see that this call to love is a real challenge. It’s a lot more than nice words!

St. Augustine has a famous saying, “Love, and do what you will.” This means that, whatever we think it best to do in any situation—whether to spare or punish a child, for example—what matters most is to do it with love. It isn’t a question so much of doing “the loving thing,” but rather of the loving heart accompanying whatever we do.

This is well exemplified at La Salette. If Mary had smiled instead of weeping, if she had praised instead of chiding, she would still have expressed the same life-giving love in either case.